Here we are: the last personal project blog. My final budget update on this site. (For those of you still interested–and thanks for the support, all of you–head over to my main blog, where the Friday budget updates will continue.)

I’ve noticed that I’ve gradually gotten worse at reporting impulse purchases, but our approach to them is different. Rather than seeing them as grocer spending, we see them as overall impulse purchasing/discretionary spending. It means if we blow too much money on fun food stuff, no other fun stuff happens–no movies, no coffee out, no shoes. While our food spending may not have decreased overall, we’re definitely budgeting better–still managing to eat well & have fun dates while *gasp* saving for retirement and having a real savings account. #BigKids

I was sick this week, so I never felt like really making food. I mostly drank 50/50 berry & ate crackers (or cookies). Toward the end of the week, we discovered our new favorite winter-weather salad with beets. I found a way to enjoy beets–or at least hide them under other things I like eating & chew them without gagging. Progress!

This Saturday, the winter farmers’ market starts. Between school work & picking up our CSA, we haven’t been to a farmers’ market in weeks. Since I’m hoping to get all but $10 of our food goods at the winter market, this coming week could be very interesting. People sound surprised when I say that we’ll try to eat just from winter market, but there’s loads that people grow through winter, plus several merchants sell dried goods & ground flour. And $10 gets you a lot of grains/proteins in the bulk food section of the store. I say, bring on this next zero-waste adventure! To be continued…